Literally four years on… it did get finished, but how it changed! Got somewhat changed pre glassing etc. Thanks to Tomo-inspired design no longer a pintail, etc, etc, and this is the same board I mislaid recently at Dee Why.

The fifth plug knubster is the most recent inclusion and ridden only once since. Did it need it? Who knows, I had fun prior, but what the heck!

saltman wrote:Been thinking and reading about tomos for a long while Rick
Reading your ride report and looking at the pics it brings me back to the wakeboard you can paddle analogy ?

Read or heard a thing more recently with Mr Slater talking about board length and a major part of the info I took away was once they were planing it was fairly academic. So if you can get the wave… yes I know that leads to other areas.

Anyway, on a recent trip to Bali swapped boards with a guy I know and ended up riding his 5'5" Tomo Evo, quite possibly the shortest board I have ridden. Only really got one wave to speak of but I glimpsed the capabilities straight away. Also makes you realise how mental surfing is as most of the time I find it difficult to get my head around a board that is shorter than my height - why?

Soooo, after the R-Tak turned into a Tomo inspired board there was yet another idea niggling me in the wee hours. Hard to explain so hopefully the pictures tell a story.

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OK, so this board is made from light green sheets of under floor insulation foam, extruded polystyrene (XPS). Fortunately I have friends with a CNC machine so they cut 18 identical pieces representing the foil from a file I gave them which was slightly bigger than the proposed shape. I glued up, very badly I must say with spray glue, then had it machine cut normally. Now for those of you that might NOT have played with XPS I can tell you it's a strange beast. It can tear quite easily and sometimes feels as though it has a grain direction. Anyway, I got there, including a few bits wanting to come adrift while finish shaping. My bad glue up!

Yes, the deck and rails are full carbon. Why? Because I had it and secondly because the XPS was a bit soft and that was another finding of the XPS in sheet form. Seemed quite rigid one way (the way it would normally be laid) but because I have effectively turned it on it's side it wasn't as tough. Least that was my belief and thumb testing confirmed. and of course the board is fundamentally stringerless.

So, as stated, deck/rail is carbon + 4oz e-glass + carbon back foot patches. Bottom is Nylextra + 4oz e-glass. 3 x Fusion plugs post installed and glassed over. No choice but to use epoxy resin and a good to get the most value out of the carbon. The board is relatively light, but the deck is amazingly strong as I'm normally brutal.

Now these rail fin things (I'm call 'em winglets for now), because that is basically what the board was/is about. My idea, at least, was to have something removable so I could try and quantify what they did. I mean everything does something, right? Be buggered if I could think of a practical viable solution so even the production became a work in progress, and I mean work.

As you can possibly tell from the image the winglets are made from wood (balsa) and were glued on during production, i.e. the board was laminated normally as a pintail then the winglets attached in a roughed out form, then shaped in-situ, glassed over and the whole board finished as normal, whatever that is when I get inspired.

Had to be careful with the thickness of them as I didn't want this board turning into a marine scythe of sorts to inflict damage on others or me! Must say I find myself resting my knees on them quite a lot. So they are not overly thin or sharp.

Hardest part of all this winglet build was the various transitions as they are quite long, think blending with the planshape, rocker and rail line making it all look right so I had to build areas to make all that happen with resin and q-cell. I painted them satin black after the normal finishing of the board to cover areas where I had to blend it all.

Took it to Bali without riding, oh come on how bad could it be? It's basically the Tomo-inspired design with a different tail and a few other things like flutes in the bottom. Well it had to work, it was either it or I was going to spend the trip riding the 6'10" JD big board, not gun. In retrospect it could have folded in half for all I knew.

5'11" x 20 x 2 5/8 or thereabouts, approx 34 l before shape shifting some flues through the back. In boards like this I find the length measure is less relevant. I think I could cut a few inches off the nose and not compromise the board.

Ride report, what to say? I enjoyed it a lot when I had my sh*t together. Hard to tell whether the winglets influence the planshape, I sense they do, in that the board feel like it planes quite easily and if you've seen footage of surfers from above you see often how little of our supposedly precious rails even penetrate the water surface. Certainly had the odd wave where I made it around sections I thought I wouldn't, yet it doesn't seem to be a board you have to nurse around which I often associate with wider tailed boards. I had one tail slide moment, but in a fun, not an "WTF" way and not in any cutback. The spinout bottom turn where I lost all 3 fins at once does NOT count - I made the fins and that is another f-up fairy story.

Swapped it with the Tomo rider and he had a few decent rides but described it as probably best for down the line point waves. I saw him searching with back foot placement. He felt he had to be way over the back fin and put simply you don't, in that regard the board is a pintail.

offshore1 wrote:So different from your original design Ric.
Completely different tail configuration.

thruster now instead of quad? Any video re performance?

Glad to see you're still pushing the boundaries.
Hoping you got the Virginsurf Christmas ham holiday bonus I sent you.

P.s. my son's been riding a 5-6 Tomo and really likes it.

Yes mate, got it, you're worth more!

The tail was going to be a BIT more like the other but it became impractical to build. I considered started with a very wide square tail and shaping in the winglet but you can imagine how fraught it would be to damage, and I'm talking during production let alone in the water. Plus I wanted something that if it didn't work I could grind it off. Don't forget there is a normal, intact pintail there.

So why pintail rather than wider split Lost-ish, Tomo-ish one? Basically just my prefered tail, and think they hold in better as size increases.That said, the winglets add width to the planshape when submersed should do something different.

If you saw the bottom flutes you'd understand why no quad, plus nothing broken about thrusters… you just know they are going work.